We've now spent approximately four months on the boat. We have finally left St. Martin, and have sailed down to Martinique. 

    I'll start from the beginning:

    Putting the sails up was very aggravating. The first time we tried the mainsail, we realized that the places where the sail connects to the sail-cars were the wrong size and that the shackles wouldn't go in correctly. We took it back. The next time we tried it, we found that the bolt-things that go into the end of the batten-pockets and connect them to the batten-cars just slid into their sockets instead of screwing in. It turns out that instead of going with the normal size, someone had given them the wrong measurements and made the sockets too big. So we took it back again. Finally, we got it back again, and were able to put it on completely. However, we hadn't actually hoisted it yet, and Chris was positive that we would try to put it up and it wouldn't reach the top. I told him to stop giving the universe ideas. 

    The jib got up without mishaps, but we discovered, on the way back from Anguilla the first time, that the tack (aft-most edge) fluttered a lot, and whacked into the spreaders. When we came back to St. Martin, down it came again. That time it stayed up.

    Coming back from Nevis and Kitts with our third visitors we had an ... interesting situation. We were a couple hours away from St Martin, with about 25- to 30-knot winds, when our port (luckily it was our leeward side at the time) cap shroud came out of the turnbuckle. So here we were, in twelve-foot seas, taking greenies over the bow every five seconds, with my dad and our visitor sitting out on the side, trying to wrestle this thing back into the turnbuckle. They eventually got it in, as we kept sailing, and were able to tie it in place to make sure it didn't come out again. Back in St. Martin, we spent a day or so going through all the turnbuckles on the boat, cleaning them and then putting them back in place.

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